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Re-growing store bought veggies

pollinator

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Location: North Idaho

posted 10 months ago

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Has anyone tried to re-grow their veggies?

I wanted to try out some of this a few years back and have quite good success with it.
Some of the things I have tried out thus far.

Onions are great for regrowing, you cut off the bottom 3/16ths inch to 1/4 inch of an onion where the roots were and set it just under the soil and water.. Voila a few days later it is putting out roots and growing a stalk. You cannot regrow an onion bulb this way but you can grow greens and it will go to seed if you allow it to. I grow out the bottoms of the onions I use in the late winter and plant them out in my garden in early spring.

I also do this with leeks as well. A leek will regrow the stalk and then go to seed if you allow it to. When you plant a leek it will not go to seed the first year so if you want leek seed buying a leek and regrowing the bottom of it will give you seed the same year you plant it.

Carrots are another good and very easy one to regrow. Again, you will not get a new carrot growing, but you will get a bushy carrot plant for greens and later seed production.

One of my favorite things on earth.. well beside leek is celery, it goes good in pretty much everything and there are few things I love to much on more than celery. I have never been successful at growing celery from seed but regrowing from store bought celery has worked well for me.

I have also done this with cabbage and Brussels sprouts as well. I have read that you can also do this with lettuce though I have yet to try the lettuce out. Does anyone have any other plants that they have done this with? I would expand this to more plants.

William Bronson

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posted 10 months ago

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I've gotten multiple smaller bulbs from the butt ends of onions, but I tend to leave them be for a long time.
I have let quite a few go to seed, in hopes to naturalize them in my garden.

This year I'm planting turnip tops and cores just to get greens.

I just planted some carrots ends, I'm hoping to make a pesto with the greens.

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Anne Miller

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posted 10 months ago

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Those look like some serious regrowth. thank you for sharing.

I have experimented with much the same as you have except not with leek.

My projects never got past the experiments though I did learn this was possible.

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J Garlits

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posted 10 months ago

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You've struck a chord in me with this post. I've wanted to do this for several years but have been to lazy and unfocused. Seeing your pictures sparked my interest level up. "Look, Roy is doing it, why haven't you?" And it's free food. No thought involved. I love celery, too. I'll start with that. Why throw something away that regenerates so easily?

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Carla Burke

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posted 10 months ago

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Here's another thread that might give you even more ideas: https://permies.com/t/free-seed

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Jacob Englund

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posted 10 months ago

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I have once. I planted a 30 ft row of store bought garlic(softneck) in the fall of 2022 just to see what would happen. It didnt do well at all. I dug up maybe 5 ft worth it in different spots and decided it was not worth digging up so i left it to rot. I was taking advantage of the nice weather mid February in the upper midwest and noticed the store bought garlic i had left to rot was growing again. This time instead of there being 2-4 clover per 1 i originally planted there were at 8+ cloves. Im assumning they eventually grow together to form a head but im contemplating digging them up and replanting each bulb individually.

20240214_172214.jpg

Helen Tudway-Cains

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posted 10 months ago

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I've had great success with replanting Leeks. I really like the white blanched portion of Leeks, so I only cut off the smallest amount of stalk with the root-much less than in your photos. Like maybe 3/8 of an inch. It depends on the Leek, it needs to have some of the white. I then put the root in a glass of water on the window sill and watch for the top (white part) to sprout green leaf, changing the water daily. Then I plant it outdoors. I have re-grown full Leeks this way. Sometimes they just go to seed, or rot, but more often than not, I get a full sized Leek.

Wow, my whole gardening Life, I thought you couldn't eat Carrot tops. Just learned something new.

That Celery looks like it grows a full new stalk? Does it get full size?

Nancy Reading

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posted 10 months ago

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I have once. I planted a 30 ft row of store bought garlic(softneck) in the fall of 2022 just to see what would happen. It didnt do well at all. I dug up maybe 5 ft worth it in different spots and decided it was not worth digging up so i left it to rot. I was taking advantage of the nice weather mid February in the upper midwest and noticed the store bought garlic i had left to rot was growing again. This time instead of there being 2-4 clover per 1 i originally planted there were at 8+ cloves. Im assumning they eventually grow together to form a head but im contemplating digging them up and replanting each bulb individually.

Hi and welcome to Permies!
So how long did you leave them the first time? till early summer? Were they just tiny with little cloves? Maybe the spot wasn't optimum for them, or maybe they have somehow acclimatised. I find that garlic doesn't really like my climate and would just disappear if I try and plant it out - in the polytunnel however, it is practically perennial!

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Andie Carter

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posted 10 months ago

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In the past, I've regrown green onions here and there, and get them to survive for a few years outside, though I tend to forget and over harvest and exhaust the bulbs... This year I'm throwing every green onion root out into the yard, so hopefully I'll have enough that I'll get a self-sustaining population going and I won't have to buy green onions any more.

I also regrow herbs after picking all but the apical bud. I've got thai basil going right now; in the past I've also done sweet basil, mint, rosemary, perilla, and others. I keep being temped by the tiny buds on ginger, but honestly I just don't have the climate for it- outside of a hoop house. We'll see what this year brings.

Robin Katz

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Those are some nice plants and especially welcome this time of the year. I haven't tried with herbs yet so that's a good idea.

I regrow celery and it's worked well for me too since I like the green leafy part in soups. I'm regrowing onions right now and harvesting the green part.

One of my favorites this time of year is taking garlic cloves that are sprouting and planting them about 1 inch apart in a pot and letting it grow to 6+ inches before pulling the whole plant. I love green garlic flavor. I start a new pot every week so there is a constant supply, at least until I run out of cloves.

I've regrown butter head lettuce from the "living lettuce" heads that you can find in most stores. It does well in the house, then replanted in the garden.

Anthony Powell

Posts: 126

Location: NW England

posted 10 months ago

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Hardly re-growing, more growing store-bought veg: arrowhead and eddo tubers. The arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) has to be fresh-ish, not dried out at all; although it's a pond plant, it will grow in a pot, but I find the leaf stalks rather floppy and it benefits from the shelter of a pond. Eddo (Colocasia antiquorum) can take it fairly dry indoors in a pot overwinter, going almost leafless - but does get covered in aphids there.
Hardy Yam (Dioscorea batatas/oppositifolia or whatever) on the other hand, does grow from bits of root, like dandelion, but may take a while to organise a bud. I have mine in pots overwinter, setting out (still in pots) on an old dustbin of a light compost (I'll be turning this out at harvest time - soil's heavy!) sat under a tree (light canopy preferred - plum's better than hazel). Although PFAF (https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Dioscorea+japonica) say it's hardy to -20C, that might be true when it's in the ground - I lost a few roots in my bin in a hard winter, so propagated from my last remaining firm root found at the bottom of the bin. It's reknowned for being invasive.. be it's little aerial bulbils dropping around, not that I've noticed here in mid-UK

Joshua States

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Location: Alpine southwest USA

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posted 10 months ago

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I have done this with green onions and repeated it with the same onion 4-6 times. The longest lived ones got huge!
It seems that each regeneration, the bulb gets a little bigger. After the 6th time, the bulb was the size of a tennis ball.
Now I don't even pull a green onion anymore. I just cut them off a little below the surface and let them do their thing.
You can definitely do the grow greens and get seeds for almost any root veggie you buy at the store, as long as there is enough green left on top to grow.
Radishes are perfect because they generally come with heathly greens still attached.

I also grow seeds from store bought veggies like peppers, melons, and squash.
Potatoes have also been a good source of seed stock.

It's probably best to choose veggies from a local farmer's market, if you have one. That way you stand a better chance of getting something that is acclimated to your environment.

Daniel Schneider

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Location: Sweden

posted 10 months ago

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I regrow lettuce all the time. I buy lettuces in pots in rhe late winter, cut them about a couple of cm above the soil, and then put the stumps in their pots on the windowsill till it's warm enough to plant them out. I generally get 3-4 harvests from each of them over a summer.

Jacob Englund

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posted 10 months ago

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Nancy Reading wrote:

I have once. I planted a 30 ft row of store bought garlic(softneck) in the fall of 2022 just to see what would happen. It didnt do well at all. I dug up maybe 5 ft worth it in different spots and decided it was not worth digging up so i left it to rot. I was taking advantage of the nice weather mid February in the upper midwest and noticed the store bought garlic i had left to rot was growing again. This time instead of there being 2-4 clover per 1 i originally planted there were at 8+ cloves. Im assumning they eventually grow together to form a head but im contemplating digging them up and replanting each bulb individually.

Hi and welcome to Permies!
So how long did you leave them the first time? till early summer? Were they just tiny with little cloves? Maybe the spot wasn't optimum for them, or maybe they have somehow acclimatised. I find that garlic doesn't really like my climate and would just disappear if I try and plant it out - in the polytunnel however, it is practically perennial!

Apologies for the delayed response. I only planted them once in the fall of 2022 and thought they had died. We ate the few harvested july of 2023. I harvested one today I'm going to experiment with. Should be a decent crop this season considering this was one on the smaller side.

20240312_112716.jpg

Joshua States

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Location: Alpine southwest USA

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posted 10 months ago

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Apologies for the delayed response. I only planted them once in the fall of 2022 and thought they had died. We ate the few harvested july of 2023. I harvested one today I'm going to experiment with. Should be a decent crop this season considering this was one on the smaller side. [/quote wrote:

It looks like you didn't let them grow long enough. Those are still the single cloves you planted, or did you already break the head apart?
When garlic really gets going, the plants are quite large compared to the greens in your picture. With softneck, I think the clove starts to develop into multiple cloves similar to hardneck , after a center shoot (scape) comes out. You cut this off and the bulb starts to divide into multiple cloves. The scapes are edible, with a milder flavor than the cloves.

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Joshua States

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Location: Alpine southwest USA

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posted 10 months ago

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@Legion Air, for the record these are hardneck garlic that I planted in September as single cloves. They will probably be ready to harvest late summer.

Garlic-V2.jpg

Jacob Englund

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posted 10 months ago

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Joshua States wrote:@Legion Air, for the record these are hardneck garlic that I planted in September as single cloves. They will probably be ready to harvest late summer.

It was one bulb i broke apart. I was curious to see if it was growing properly for being planted 2 seasons ago and left. I will post updates itt as the season goes by. Wdym about cutting center though.

Joshua States

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Location: Alpine southwest USA

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It was one bulb i broke apart. I was curious to see if it was growing properly for being planted 2 seasons ago and left. I will post updates itt as the season goes by. Wdym about cutting center though. [/quote wrote:

Scapes are the flower/seed pod that grows out of the center of the plant. I'm not sure if softneck produces scapes, maybe someone can clarify for us. I only grow hardneck varieties.
Anyway, you cannot mistake them for something other than what they are. They have a long thin stem and a pod shape at the end. These are cut off once they start curling to encourage the bulb to divide and produce more cloves.

Joshua States

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Location: Alpine southwest USA

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posted 9 months ago

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@Legion Air and anyone else interested, these are hardneck garlic scapes. They will eventually grow into a seed pod, but garlic seeds ae one of those funky things that don't always grow true. So, you cut them off and that will induce the head to split and multiply cloves. You can use the scapes like you would regula cloves of garlic. They have a subtler flavor, but still very good.

Garlic-scapes-(1).jpg

Garlic-scapes-(2).jpg

Garlic-scapes-(4).jpg

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